Men are just as likely as women to want children and are more likely to feel
depressed and angry than their partners if they do not have them, a study
suggests.

Research presented to the British Sociological Association's annual conference yesterday shows that childless men associate jealousy, loneliness, and depression with the fact that they did not have children.

The impact can last a lifetime, with many older men feeling pangs of regret when their friends become grandfathers, it found.

But the findings also showed that men felt the absence of children in different ways to women.

While some women said they felt “guilt” about not having children and spoke of feeling a “biological” need, men were more likely to cite cultural and family expectations.

Meanwhile among those who are already parents, women are more likely than men to feel a strong desire for a second child.

The study was presented by Robin Hadley, a counsellor and doctoral student at Keele University who interviewed two samples of men and women with and without children.

Half of the men who did not have children said they felt “isolation” as a result, compared with just over a quarter of the women.

Similarly, almost four out of 10 childless men said they felt depressed, compared with three out of 10 of their female counterparts.

Men were also more likely than women to associate not having children with feelings of sadness and jealousy.

When asked if they felt a “yearning” to be a parent, the responses were similar for childless men and women – with seven out of 10 saying that they did.

But while around one in seven women without children said it made them feel “guilt” none of the men polled cited this emotion.

“There is very little research on the desire for fatherhood among men,” said Mr Hadley.

“My work shows that there was a similar level of desire for parenthood among childless men and women in the survey, and that men had higher levels of anger, depression, sadness, jealousy and isolation than women and similar level of yearning.

“This challenges the common idea that women are much more likely to want to have children than men, and that they consistently experience a range of negative emotions more deeply than men if they don’t have children.”

In a follow-up study Mr Hadley asked some older men how they felt about not having had children.

One 70-year-old man quoted in his presentation said: "If I'd had children, I'd have been a proper grandfather.